NEWS ANALYSIS : Serb Turns Chaos, Apathy to Own Advantage : Balkans: Milosevic knows low voter turnout is certain to doom referendum on early elections and allow him to retain power.

In a move befitting his reputation as a cunning political tactician, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic appears to have hit on a formula for staying in power by turning voter apathy and confusion to his advantage.

Milosevic has been under pressure from Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Panic to call early elections and to allow the Serbian people to rethink their support for the regime that has led them to ruin.

The Serbian president reportedly promised Panic and Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic that he would submit to a vote before the year’s end as a condition for their agreement to lead the new Yugoslavia that Milosevic created from the last two republics of the shattered Balkan federation.

Milosevic’s popularity has been waning since May, when the United Nations slapped Serbia and Montenegro with severe sanctions for their role in fomenting deadly warfare in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The latest opinion polls in Serbia show Milosevic and the Socialists trailing any potential opposition coalition headed by Panic or Cosic. Less than two years ago, Milosevic won a five-year mandate with more than two-thirds of the vote.

But fearful now of defeat, Milosevic has sought to stall the election and has masked his evasion with a veneer of popular support.

The Socialist Party of Serbia, led by Milosevic, has scheduled a little-publicized referendum for Sunday asking voters whether they support or oppose early elections.

The catch, clearly understood by Milosevic, is that the ballot needs a 50% turnout to be valid; that is a virtually impossible hurdle to surmount considering the splintered, resentful and increasingly apolitical electorate.

“If there is not satisfactory turnout, he (Milosevic) can claim that most of the people say elections are unnecessary,” said Vojislav Kostunica, head of the opposition Democratic Party of Serbia.

In the troubled remains of Yugoslavia, where the poorly organized opposition routinely sends mixed signals to supporters, turnout has been low recently even for broadly publicized elections. The May 31 vote to seat a new federal Parliament was said to have had a 52% turnout. But most opposition parties accused the victorious Socialists of using massive fraud to squeak past the threshold for validation.

Thanks to the virtual absence of campaigning, Sunday’s vote is expected to fall far short of the minimum turnout. The 2 million Albanians in Kosovo province, who account for 20% of Serbia’s population, boycott all elections in protest against the Serbian-imposed police state they have endured for more than three years.

Milosevic’s Socialist Party has been transmitting the message to supporters that the best contribution they can make is to stay home.

And the opposition, sensing defeat, has refused to organize any movement to get out the vote.

“The referendum has been so under-publicized that it’s obvious the republican government and regime do not want it to succeed,” complained Vladeta Jankovic, head of the DEPOS opposition coalition.

Jankovic insists elections must be held both in Serbia and on the federal level as soon as possible because “the only alternative to elections is a social explosion and civil war. No one in his right mind, not even the Socialists, can want that.”

Others disagree. They see Milosevic as power-hungry and desperate enough to risk bloody fratricide rather than submit his resignation and call an election.

David Calef, Panic’s spokesman, said the prime minister did not consider the referendum to be in violation of a reported agreement he had with Milosevic for early elections. “But it seems superfluous to have an election to decide if we should have an election,” Calef said of Panic’s position. “This is not what democracy is all about.”